Lifeline
by Icebabe59
Summary: "She often wondered if the length of a person's lifeline really did affect how long they were meant to life." Molly inspects the lifelines of those who would come through her morgue. Philosophical and perhaps a bit morbid with a cute ending. Rated T because there is a flashback where the characters are high.


**Disclaimer: I don't own the rights to BBC's Sherlock or Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's Sherlock Holmes or anything like that. Also I know very little about palm reading, there is only so much Google can do. I know the idea, but not the culture. So I hope that I don't offend anyone with this piece.**

* * *

Molly was hardly the superstitious type. Science seemed to explain enough about the world around her that she didn't even feel the need to explain the wind away to some Greek god or the sun rising as an Egyptian god that was gracing the world yet again. She had grown up with a very superstitious Nana though, who claimed to have gypsy blood running though her veins.

Molly was always fascinated by her Nana's stories and would often spend Sunday afternoons sitting at the kitchen table eating biscuits and listening to Nana who would be working at the stove to create some new dish or dessert. She had many fond memories in that kitchen, but the one she remembered clear as day was on the afternoon of her twelfth birthday.

Nana sat her down at the kitchen table and then sat across from her instructing Molly to hold out her hands. When Nana was a little girl she had been taught palm reading and now Molly was at the age where it was her turn to learn.

The two women, one wizen and grey, while the other was young and vibrant, sat at the table for over an hour talking; learning and sharing knowledge. Molly learned about everything: the lifeline, the health line, the meaning of the size of the palm compared to the length of the fingers, and she soaked in all of it like a bone dry sponge.

As Molly grew up she cherished that memory, and even though she never really put a lot of stock in the practice it always made for a nice party trick. Then once she began training as a pathologist she would look at the courses' palms almost out of habit.

She often wondered if the length of a person's lifeline really did affect how long they were meant to live. She knew it was probably a silly notion. Especially since the lifeline was more traditionally tied to the quality of life and not the length of life, but she would entertain the thought anyway.

Once she completed her training, when she met Sherlock not only was she completely flustered, but after the initial shock of him all she could think about was wanting to read his palms. She forgot about that some as she worked with him, more taken in by his stunningly blue eyes and sharp cheekbones.

Most days didn't involve Sherlock though and Molly would continue her work in the quiet morgue. She found a pattern in the morgue that while the variables were not predictable there were constants. Death was always a constant for Molly, a part of life that she made sure was as smooth of a transition for the families who mourned the death of a loved one as much as possible.

Every once in a while, during a quiet day in the morgue, Molly would find herself sitting in her chair tracing her own lifeline and wondering if there were going to be mourners when she died.

Sherlock happened to walk in on one of those moments. He did not make his usual loud entrance this time, mostly because he was hoping to borrow some of the lab equipment for an experiment. He was sure that Molly would let him use the equipment, but he didn't at all want to deal with the pleasantries of it all, so he made sure she didn't notice him as he entered the lab.

He didn't notice her much as he walked in either, but the experiment took only moments to set up and would take an hour or so before there was anything to really observe. So to kill time he found himself outside of Molly's office door.

This was when he noticed the way she would trace the lines on her right hand with the tip of her left index finger. There seemed to be a pattern to her musings, he noticed. First she would trace across the three deepest lines in her palm, and then she would trail across several smaller lines, but she always lingered the longest over one particular line. Sherlock had to think for quite some time before he could figure out if there was any significance to that line. Then a vague memory popped into his head.

* * *

"_You see this line right here, the one that runes from the junction between your thumb and index finger all the way down to you wrist?" The girl's voice drifted though Sherlock's high and he nodded. When he was like this he could put up with almost anything, even the noisy babble of the armature palm reader who was anxious to please. _

"_That is your lifeline, some people think it predicts how long your life will be, they are wrong though. . ." The girls voice drifted away as Sherlock slipped a little further into his own mind, focusing only on the feel of her fingertips on his palm._

* * *

Sherlock came back from the memory choking on the non-existent smoke that had filled the vision. The lifeline, why on earth would Molly be interested in her lifeline? She did work in a morgue though, death everywhere but still. His voice cut through his own thoughts as well as Molly's when he spoke.

"Why the lifeline?" he asked startling her.

"Sorry, what?" Molly asked, her hands slapping down on her desk.

"Your lifeline. You seemed to be considering it more than the other lines. Why?" Sherlock took a step towards Molly in his quest to learn more about Molly.

"I . . . I guess I just think about it the most." Molly answered rather lamely. Could she be any more awkward? "I mean, I think it is the one thing that is the biggest mystery for me. Life and death."

Sherlock nodded and thought about it for a while. "So who taught you palm reading?"

Molly was used to the jump in Sherlock's thought process so she only hesitated a moment before replying. "My Nana, she used to tell such grand stories about gypsy life, even though I'm fairly certain she never was one."

She was smiling so openly that Sherlock was surprised, around him she was usually very nervous and somewhat reserved, and he quickly realized how much he wanted to keep her smiling like that if at all possible. "Would you be willing to read my fortune?" He asked.

Molly looked at him like he was crazy for a few minutes and was silent. Then she shrugged, smiled brightly and held out her hand expectantly. "Dominant hand and no complaining if you don't like what I have to say." Molly ordered with her heart fluttering more than she thought possible as Sherlock complied.


End file.
